ONE SMALL STEP

I’ve just finished reading a book which dealt with characters having to take steps to change the far future following a message sent back through time. It was set in 1920’s rural England and didn’t hold all of the classic time travel decorations of vehicles to accomplish the jump and wild and advanced science. Instead, it was told on a much smaller scale with all of the action unfolding between at maximum three characters, and that size of story is something which appealed to me.

I’ve written books which encompass sweeping tales of good and evil, and massive scope for intrigue and peril, but stripping away so much of the superfluous information can lead us to a tighter and more accurate story.

The tale of changing the past to prevent some future catastrophe isn’t new. The idea of going back to kill Hitler before he got his head of steam going pops up a fair amount in books, film and TV, so much so that it tends to be as a throw away line to give quick explanation of what’s taking place at that point.

Dipping back into the past was embedded in Avengers Endgame and the scale was enormous. The Back to the Future films had the same idea but was more aimed in where our attention was focused but both these example had the characters seeing the time changes personally and then amending issues as they unfold.

But now consider that you don’t even get to see the problem yourself.

You’re told by the big booming voice from the future that to stop a terrible wrong in the far future you need to prevent a certain event now. You get a cursory overview as to the details but the rest is up to you. Could you trust that it’s for real? I suppose that would depend on the way things are presented to you but beyond the mechanics of time travel and the hard science of it all, the biggest hurdle to overcome would be the idea that just completing one miniscule task now could save lives in a thousand years.

It’s all too easy to just look at ourselves and what we do as being the tiniest speck in the grand tapestry of all of reality but even a single dropped stitch in that tapestry can have an effect.

I went to the beach today and had a wander about, getting some fresh air and I picked up and put down a few stones as I went. They just looked interesting and I wanted to have a look see. All good fun. But when I’d finished my assessment, I dropped them back on the beach, but in new positions. What’s to say that by me putting that stone where I did, I set in motion a cascade of events that means that in a thousand years it’s a fragment of that rock which results in the event which kills millions? If I hadn’t picked it up, no far off event?

We’ve all been told to see the big picture at some point but maybe we’ve been looking the wrong way? If any and all tiny events have the chance to warp the future, maybe we can see ourselves as being just that little bit more powerful, and by extension, that much more invested in the world around us.

Every action matters.

Stay safe all.

ONE PIECE

We’re all moving through our lives and doing everything we can to be the best we can be. We all want to have the best we can possibly imagine without having too much negativity to overcome.

Now we may all be aiming for the best possible outcomes all of the time but that doesn’t mean that we’re always lucky enough to get there. Life kind of has a habit of putting obstacles in our way and what potentially should have been a straight forward process can become multi layered like a game of 3D chess and you have to find out how the rules work on the fly.

It’s easy to hang your head and accept defeat when something presents itself in the way but it doesn’t have to work that way.

I’ve been bouncing along on my current book quite nicely but I’ve also been dragging a weight behind me as I’ve written. I’ve known what the story needs to be for the most part but I kept butting up against the fact that I was missing a way to correctly marry all of the avenues I’ve been working on. At the back end of last week, I pretty much stumbled over the very first wave in the story which had been caused by that lacking nugget of inspiration I needed to write my way over.

I wrote my way over it but as I settled on the other side of the wave, I didn’t feel that confident in my footing.

What I’d written was OK, but it just didn’t feel anything beyond just about OK-ish. It worked for the story but just didn’t seem to be getting beyond about 50% strength.

I was kinda stuck.

Without the correct piece to go in the hole, the story was going to be perpetually feeling like it was going to grow up in the wrong way, like a plant forced to grow in a peculiar way due to it’s surroundings. I needed to have that lost piece for my machine to work.

Today I found it.

It’s that understanding that a single change to what I’d been doing which not only excited the book but it’s a lesson to live by.

We may not be lucky enough to have a problem be solved by a single idea in life but being able to at least begin to affect the outcome will always come down to a single choice. We may be stuck trying to overcome a massive problem but taking that very first step is the tiny act which starts us on the journey towards our goals. We can so often see the huge issue as a whole and therefore, too big to best, but the small steps along the way are our way to keep moving forward and break down obstacles into fragments.

Tiny piece by tiny piece, we can dismantle what’s before us and be successful, even if that process takes longer than expected. That tiny piece is what we needed all along.

Ray Bradbury wrote a story called A Sound of Thunder which dealt with this idea by having time travellers tread on a prehistoric butterfly by mistake which in turn lead to massive changes to our timeline. One tiny event resulted in a universe affecting consequence.

Just think how powerful that one tiny choice you make today could be on your journey towards your goals.

Stay safe all.

THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT

Her Majesty the Queen has taken her leave of us and we start the reign on King Charles III. The whole country is in mourning and there’s been a massive feeling that we’re witnessing something historically important.

Queen Elizabeth II has been our monarch for 70 years and something that that will mean for the vast majority of the population is she’s been a constant for all of our lives.

We’ve seen video of her coronation from way back when but for most of us, the idea of a new monarch has just been something that we’ve had to consider theoretically. It’s become more of an academic discussion over the years. We’ve collectively known what would happen but it’s all of the tiny aspects that we’re used to that we’ll have to change that prick our skin like thorns.

Money and stamps will need a make over and the national anthem has a change of words coming. Lots of tiny amendments to the world we see to move to the next stage of history and it’s those tiny changes which make us stop and think.

Big changes come about as a result of a collection of smaller things and maybe we could all do with remembering that events can have effects that unfold like waves on water.

We see now a time with King Charles III is at the top and on we all go. Every single person from our new King and all the way along is going to be affected in even the slightest way by the passing of the Queen and we all experience our own changes all of the time so recognising that any change can make us trip.

A page of history has turned and it’s an earthquake in our culture. Our own changes can be no less affecting.

Stay safe all.

BITS AND PIECES

Have you ever lost weight? Not a small amount but enough that you now need to buy new trousers because all the ones you have are now sliding down with wild abandon. It’s the culmination of hard work and determination and very often it’s that final moment where your clothes are all over the show that really hits the fact of the weight loss home.

When people see you before the weight loss adventure begins and then don’t see you again until after you’ve been successful, the difference is huge and clear for all to see. The same happens when your weight goes the other way, trust me!

The point being that our lives are not just a single event or outcome, rather we move from A to B and pick up things as we go.

I’ve been working in my job for ten years and over that time I’ve learned a huge number of new skills and explored any number of different situations and roles which after each one, though I didn’t recognise it at the time, nudged me very slightly away from the point I’d been when I started. I look at myself now and see massive differences to what I’d been when I started but each incremental step along the way was too small to really recognise.

Having the experiences build over the years has meant that who I was at the beginning is long gone and instead, I’ve cast off some ideas and added new ideas to the whole so I’ve become a very different person.

I’d only started writing my first book when I started out on the job I’m in now but in the intervening time I’ve published five books and taken part in numerous conventions and shows all on top of my ‘day job’. I’ve changed a huge amount and it’s an interesting phenomenon to take stock of.

As I continue the work on ‘The Circle’ series, it’s important that I keep the idea of tiny changes piling up over time so the characters involved in the stories maintain that level of reality. All of the adventures that unfold for the characters should be built upon all of the time. All the good things and all the bad things get wedged into the whole to sometimes subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, change the mindset of the characters.

Each tiny event that happens to you can push or pull you in a new direction and that could be the first step on a journey towards an amazing or terrifying place, we just never know which miniscule event could be the one that starts that process.

Maybe we should all remember that even the smallest act could be the one that changes the world.